A bold idea to tackle body image: Fresh Face Friday

What if everyone could be comfortable in their own skin? Six young regional Australians have come up with the brave idea to tackle body image issues and you could win the money to implement it.

Girls I knew with anorexia or bulimia formed cliques to compete for whose eating disorders was the most severe. I'm sick of this and at 18 years old, I'm ready to see people who are comfortable in their own skin - Brooke Mason, 18, Taroona, TAS.

At the 2013 ABC Heywire Regional Youth Summit 32 young regional Australians developed seven exciting ideasfor change. The group who identified body image as an important issue for young people developed the idea Fresh Face Friday.

Check out their idea and if you like it you can apply for up to $10,000 to implement it in your community as part of the FRRR Heywire Regional Youth Innovation Grants. [ Guidelines and Application Form ]

THE IDEA: FRESH FACE FRIDAY

What if everyone could be comfortable in their own skin? Each year, BIEDAW (Body Image and Eating Disorders Awareness Week) aims to renew the public's focus on improving body esteem. To find out whether this week is well known, we asked a 50-strong group of people if they'd heard of it. We were confronted with a resounding no.

Our aim is to raise awareness about this week through an initiative we've called Fresh Face Friday. Fresh Face Friday will ask women all over Australia, especially those in the media, to go to work, school and uni without makeup for a day to show that they are comfortable in their own skin. Fresh Face Friday will be held on the last Friday before BIEDAW.

So how can you get involved? On Fresh Face Friday, share, like and re-tweet the campaign message across social media platforms. Show off your make-up free face on Instagram by posting your selfie (self-portrait) and using it as your profile picture for the day. A campaign hashtag will enable the media to easily follow and report on the campaign.

We hope that one day it will go global, just as campaigns such as Movember and Earth Hour have done.

Since the Heywire Summit we've discovered a similar campaign developed at a high school in America, which also uses the tagline Fresh Face Friday. We've been in contact to see if there may be potential to work together in the future.

We believe that Fresh Face Friday will be effective and is viable because it is cheap to kick off and promote, quick and simple to get involved with and has a memorable brand identity. We pride ourselves on the fact that we aren't trying to reinvent the wheel. Instead, we are building on an already existing theme week.

We WILL combat body image issues in Australia and raise awareness about BIEDAW. The question is, will we do it with your help or without it?

Our team will be running a Fresh Face Friday launch event at Newcastle University on 30 August, 2013 and we encourage you to be part of it by coming along or simply by posting a photo of your fresh face on social media that day.

We would like to see a non-for-profit organisation, perhaps one with expertise in body image, adopt the Fresh Face Friday idea and take it even further, by promoting it as a national campaign, or by running events in other towns.

My friends and I love the beach, but we don't go too often because half of my friends are too embarrassed to take their shirts off in public - Richard Baines, 21, Newcastle, NSW.

HOW TO APPLY FOR A GRANT TO IMPLEMENT FRESH FACED FRIDAY:

Community organisations can apply for seed funding of up to $10,000 in order to implement Heywire Summit ideas.

Apply by 5pm 7 June, 2013

Enquiries: Can be made on freecall 1800 170 020 or email info@frrr.org.au

WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT TO US?

Richard Baines from Newcastle, NSW, "My friends and I love the beach, but we don't go too often because half of my friends are too embarrassed to take their shirts off in public. I don't think there is anything wrong with the way my friends look, but they don't feel confident enough to ignore what the media tells them they should look like. If Fresh Face Friday were to take off across Australia, I believe my friends would be encouraged by the message that we should feel comfortable in our own skin because there is nothing wrong with the unique way each of us looks."

Brooke Mason, Taroona, TAS, "I grew up in the south of Tassie, where almost everyone knows each other. As a teenager, I learned girls can be judgemental about appearance. Nasty comments about your looks ring in your head long after they have been spoken. I want to live without being put down for being different and instead be embraced for it. Adolescent girls are very competitive with each other and yearn for acceptance. Girls I knew with anorexia or bulimia formed cliques to compete for whose eating disorders was the most severe. I'm sick of this and at 18 years old, I'm ready to see people who are comfortable in their own skin."

Heywire Summit participants, Brooke Mason and Richard Baines says Fresh Face Friday will be a hit as it is spearheaded by a social media campaign, which will hopefully reach a range of Australians. [Listen here]

If you are aged 16-22 and live in regional Australia, you could be part of the next Heywire Regional Youth Summit in Canberra, February 2014. Simply tell your story and upload it to Heywire for your chance to win an all expenses paid trip to the Summit.

If you want to talk to a professional about body image, remember that headspace.org.au, Lifeline (13 11 14), the Butterfly Foundation, Kids Help Line (1800 55 1800) , Reachout (au.reachout.com) and BeyondBlue (beyondblue.org.au) are all good places to start.